‘How Διακρίνοµαι became “Doubt”: The Jewish Two Ways Tradition and the Christian Discourse of Prayer’

Abstract The Latin translators of the New Testament often rendered the middle/passive verb διακρίνοµαι with words for doubt or indecision ( haesito, dubito ). However, in post-classical Greek, διακρίνοµαι never means ‘to doubt’. Earlier practitioners of a theologically driven philology supposed that the New Testament authors themselves created a new meaning for the word – an untenable position from the perspective of modern lexicography. How then did διακρίνοµαι become ‘doubt’? This article offers a two-pronged answer through literary-historical and cognitive linguistic analysis. First, I trace how the Greek words διακρίνοµαι and δίψυχος (‘double-minded’) became associated with the concept of ‘doubt’ through the Christian reception of the Jewish Two Ways tradition and the Letter of James. I show how the discursive connections between διακρίνοµαι, δίψυχος and ‘doubt’ (διστάζω) influenced the rendering of both terms within Coptic and Latin translation traditions. Second, I show how the same data can be analysed within a cognitive linguistic perspective, offering a model for lexicographical analysis that is grounded in modern linguistic theory.